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2012 Apple WWDC liveblog

What fruit will drop from Apple’s tree in the 2012 edition of its worldwide developer conference? Find out here as it happens

11 June 2012/18:41BST

The rumour mill’s been churning, but today the truth will out. Because Stuff has secured a seat at the keynote for Apple’s WWDC 2012 and we’ll be taking notes as Tim Cook and co drop the latest news on iOS 6, new MacBooks and more. Sit back and enjoy our live coverage of Apple’s second big event of the year…

Apple WWDC liveblog

Note: oldest comments first – scroll down for newer posts; times are BST (UK)

17:30 It’s a glorious morning here in San Francisco. Not a cloud in the azure sky, the heady scent of developers hanging heavy in the air. The Moscone Center looks like a reinforced glass Mac Mini from some angles. Fitting.

17:38 And now we're in properly. Two Door Cinema Club on the PA. More winsome indie is no doubt on the way. Ah, here's The Shins' Simple Song now. Things are looking up.

17:40 The room is vast. The tech journalists are noisy. No one knows quite what to expect, which is exciting.

17:56 We're nearly ready to kick off, though the Wi-Fi in here is mighty flaky. Come what may, we'll be bringing you the latest Apple news. You can be sure of that. Hold on to your your hats, everyone.

18:01 Lights down... Siri's talking and welcoming us to WWDC.

18:03 “How many devs does it take to change a lightbulb? None. That’s a hardware problem. Boom boom!” Good one, Siri...

18:04 “Seriously, I’m excited about the new Samsung. Not the phone, the refridgerator.”

18:05 Tim Cook's back in black. Roars from the crowd. The devs are whooping. This is the 23rd WWDC – the longest running developer conference Apple's aware of. The event's 5000 devs strong and sold out in 1hr 43mins.

18:06 There are 400 million accounts on the App Store. It has more credit card details than any other web store, and 650,000 apps in total, of which 225,000 are optimised for the iPad. A total of 30bn apps have been downloaded so far. That's four for every man, woman and child on the planet. Worth US$5billion so far to the developers. Understandably, they're clapping. And rattling their jewellery.

18:08 A video is on the way. It's about how apps are helping people the world over. Not financially, you understand.

18:09 A man is walking through a forest. He couldn't before, because he's blind and he used to get lost. Not any more! Thank you, iPhone. Is this a hint that we're going to get Apple's own maps today? And they're going to be talkative (yeah, we're looking at you, Siri)? Possibly... we'll know soon, though.

18:12 An Indian classroom being taught using an iPad anatomy app. Inspiring stuff...

18:15 Tim Cook is says a big thank you to the devs. That also gets a big clap, funnily enough.

18:19 And it's being updated to Intel Ivy Bridge. That means better graphics, doesn't it Phil? Up to 8GB 1600MHz memory, 2GHz Core i7. You can get a 512GB SSD in there, too. That's crazy in a device this small. It's twice as quick to boot as before thanks to a double-speed SSD. Blimey.

18:28 It's just 0.71in thin – a quarter thinner than the current Pro. It's close to being as thin as a MacBook Air. It's the lightest Pro ever made – lighter even than the 13in. And yes, it is a Retina Display. Loud claps for that. Yeah, we love pixel density too.

18:30 It's a 15.4in display with 2880x1800 resolution, four times as many as the 15in MAcBook Air. And, at 220ppi, that makes it the world's highest-resolution notebook display. My eyes!

18:31 OS X Lion has been updated to make the most of that Retina Display. The fonts are promised to look incredible in Mail and Safari. Aperture has also been updated for eye-slicingly sharp photo editing.

18:32 1080p videos take up less than half of the screen. Wowsers. There will be versions of Photoshop and AutoCAD for the Retina Display, too. Time to take up graphic design. Or architecture.

18:33 Actually, scrap the career change – we can play Diablo III in super HD.

18:34 "Isn't the bottom of our computer prettier than the top of anyone else's computer?" Very cheeky, Phil. But he might just be right. The innards are pretty special, too: Core i7 processors, up to 16GB memory and Nvidia GT 650M graphics, plus a 768GB SSD if you're ludicrously loaded.

18:35 Connectivity includes HDMI for the first time. That would have been cutting-edge in 2007 – thanks for catching up, Apple. There's also two Thunderbolt ports, an SD card and Magsafe 2 for charging – now thinner than ever.

18:37 No optical drive, and that's just fine by us. Otherwise, the connections are all present and correct.

18:39 The weight is 4.46lbs – about 2kg. It's no Ultrabook, but it's about as powerful as four of them put together.

18:40 "There are many design elements that users won't see, but that make all the difference." Jony Ive is talking cooling – there's a special acoustic design for the fans that makes the new MacBook Pro quieter than ever.

18:42 And Schiller's back. With 2.3GHZ i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD it starts at US$2199 – about £1300. It starts shipping today. Take our wallets, Apple. Sorry if they've got a bit of slobber on them.

18:44 Next up – OS X. Craig Federighi hits the stage.

18:46 There are 66 million OS X users, with 26 million on Lion alone. It took nine months to get 40 per cent of users on the latest OS – Windows took 27 months for the same penetration. Guffaw. We suspect Apple's pricing strategy has a lot to do with that.

18:48 Craig segues neatly on to Mountain Lion and the success of iCloud. Mountain Lion introduces 200 new features, and we're going to hear about most of them now. Wish us luck...

18:50 Time for an iCloud demo. Notes and Reminders are synced across your Macs and iOS devices, and now iMessage works on Mac too. Every conversation is available, no matter how you're communicating.

18:52 Now we're seeing Documents in the Cloud. Make a change on a document on your phone and the change is synced to your Mac immediately. Very handy, but Google has offered this stuff for years.

18:53 Now we're talking Notification Centre. We'd seen this leaked. It looks just like iOS's notifications, which is to say not dissimilar from Android's notifications.

18:54 And Apple's migrated dictation. Just like on the iPad, you can dictate into any app in which you'd normally type. First person to try this in the office is going to get a smack.

18:55 Sharing is dead easy too – it's also just like iOS, with instant sharing to Twitter and other places you could conceivably want to share, such as Flickr.

18:56 The new Safari has the fastest Java engine of any browser. Smart Search gets a clap – just type into the address bar and it turns up useful results.

18:57 iCloud Tabs allows you to pick up open tabs from your other Macs and iOS devices. Very, very neat. Just click on the little cloud in the top left hand of the browser and you can see all the tabs you have open on other devices. Careful what you're browsing, now.

18:58 Mountain Lion is looking pretty damn sweet. Swipe into Notifcation Center with two fingers and you can tweet straight into it. You can even dictate – Craig does exactly that, and the devs go wild.

19:01 New – Power Nap. It's a sleep mode that updates salient stuff while your laptop is dozing. Even your photo stream is updated. It appears to work only on SSD-equipped MacBooks, mind.

19:02 And we're on to AirPlay Mirroring. Share your screen in 1080p with an Apple TV. Game Centre is yet another iOS-born addition to Mountain Lion – and it even works cross-platform, so you can play against a mate on an iPad (if you're on the Mac, you'll probably win).

19:05 Craig's taking on The Stig at CSR Racing. Stig's on the iPad, but still wins at the drag race. A disappointing performance, Craig. Must do better. Or was winning part of The Stig's rider?

19:07 (By the way, they called The Stig "Mr X". But we weren't fooled.)

19:09 Mountain Lion is only available through the App Store – available next month for US$19.99. That's going to sting Microsoft as it tries to encourage Windows 8 adoption. You can update Mountain Lion all the way from Snow Leopard, and one purchase upgrades all your Macs. The ML upgrade is free to anyone buying a new Mac in the next month. We should hope so too...

19:10 And now, here's Scott Forstall to talk iOS. This is the big one, people.

19:11 There are 365 million iOS users, 80 per cent of who are on iOS 5. Ice Cream Sandwich has a seven per cent install base. Ouch.

19:12 There are more than 1billion iMessages sent every day. Almost half of all photos shared using Twitter's photo sharing come from iOS 5. Too many big numbers, Scott. It all sounds seriously impressive but we're getting lost. And we want to know what the new stuff looks like.

19:13 "I'm very happy yo announce iOS 6. It's a fantastic release with over 200 new features." Not another 200! Oh, alright then.

19:14 Siri gets some welcome new abilities. You can ask, "What was the score of the last Giants game?" and it'll give you a neat scorecard. As it turns out the Giants were beaten by the Rangers yesterday 5-0. Is that good? Maybe we can ask Siri.

19:17 Now on to movies. Siri can tell you whats playing at the local cinema, provides trailers and borrows ratings and reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.

19:18 Of course, whether any of this stuff will work outside the US is still anyone's guess.

19:19 More whoops and cheers – this time because Siri has learned to open apps. "Play Temple Run," says Scott. Guess what happens...

19:20 Back to sports – yes, the Premier League is in there. Scott's calling the sport in question soccer. Neat new feature – Eyes-Free. Press a steering wheel-mounted button and you can issue voice commands through your car. BMW, Merc, GM, Range Rover and many more have already signed up.

19:21 Siri's also going international, with Local Search for everyone. That includes us Brits. Now there's a reason to whoop and holler. If only we weren't British, eh?

19:22 And Siri's escaping the iPhone 4S – it's coming to the iPad in iOS 6.

19:23 Next up – Facebook integration. As with Twitter, sharing and posting to Facebook is a shortcut away, whether you want to share apps, pictures or just random thoughts. Twitter and Facebook both intergrate with the Notifications Center. You'll probably want to turn that off.

19:24 Facebook Friends will apear in your contacts book, while events and birthdays slot right into your iOS Calendar. No more excuses...

19:26 Can't take a call? Swipe up and you can send a message explaining you'll call later, and even set a geofenced reminder to make the call on your way home from work.

19:27 New: Do Not Disturb. It silences incoming calls and alerts, or you can choose a few special people that you're happy to hear from.

19:29 FaceTime now works over 3G. Your iMessage and FaceTime IDS are now unified with your phone number, so if someone's FaceTiming your phone, you can pick up the call on your iPad.

19:30 And now we're on to Safari. iCloud Tabs (the very same ones from Mountain Lion earlier) is present and correct, plus there's a newfound ability to upload photos to various sharing services straight from the browser.

19:31 Photo Stream now lets you share photos from your stream with others – choose what to share and they will appear in a folder your friend's Photos app. Only if they want them to, of course. Otherwise imagine how much fun you could have.

19:33 This event is long, but there's a lot to get through. This might be the first Apple event where we're not hoping for "One more thing..."

19:34 Back to business, meanwhile, in Mail there's a new VIP function, allowing you to specify who's most important to you. They get their own Inbox, and if you get a messgae from them, it'll appear in your lockscreen. It's now easier to embed photos and videos in email composition, too.

19:36 Brand new: Passbook. If you have an e-ticket for a flight, a film, the theatre, the train, or store cards from the likes of Starbucks, and coupons, they're now all in one place, and accessible from the lockscreen when you need them. It's time and location-aware – arrive at Starbucks and it'll show your Starbucks card on the lockscreen. Who needs NFC?

19:38 When you're done with a ticket or coupon, you swipe to dispose of it. Classic Apple interfacery: it's shredded before your eyes. Unnecessary, but delicious.

19:39 Now we're on to Guided Access, a feature specifically for kids that doesn't let them escape from the app. There must be apps that constitute cruelty if you're stuck in them. Still, if it stops the little tykes buying in-app stuff on your credit card...

19:41 We guessed it – Maps is now an Apple app with Apple's own mapping and over 100 million businesses available for Local Search.

19:42 There's a traffic service with incident reports from anonymous crowdsoucrced data from iOS devices. Take that, TomTom HD Traffic. And there's turn-by-turn navigation. Sweet. It looks fantastic, providing 3D views and an ETA, plus if it finds a faster route based on traffic, it'll re-route you.

19:43 It works with Siri, and from the lockscreen – no fingers required. You can even ask "Are we there yet?" But will Siri threaten to pull over and drop you off on the side of some foreign autoroute?

19:45 The maps are all vector-based – no clumsy redrawing, a la Google Maps. Business info cards look beautiful. Many buildings are rendered in full 3D, and you can zoom in or turn the image. Wow.

19:46 Flyover view is truly astonishing. The crowd is going wild for a 3D video-esque view of New York. But it's not video – it's rendering in real time. "That's amazing," says the techie beside us. Yes it is.

19:47 The turn-by-turn navigation has adaptive angles to let you see the turns as they come. You can zoom out to see the full route, and your ETA is always available. Just ask Siri where you want to go, and drive. It looks better than any other navigation system we've ever seen. How will traditional satnav companies respond to this, we wonder. Probably by pointing out the relatively weak GPS radio that comes in a stock smartphone. But for how long?

19:49 Other notable newbies – a redesigned App Store, per-account signatures in Mail, Lost mode in Find My iPhone allowing you to send a phone number straight to your lost device for a friendly non-criminal to call...

19:50 The iOS 6 beta is available to devs today, and it will ship in Autumn – it works on iPhone 3GS or later and iPad 2 or 3. We want it now, rather predictably.

19:51 "So, what do you think?" says the black-clad Tim. The crowd quite literally goes wild.

19:54 We're wrapping up... it's all over. The Black Keys' Gold on the Celing plays us out. And we're off to play with some new Apple kit...

That's all folks – don't forget to check the homepage for hands-on, opinion, news and more from Apple's WWDC